A panoramic photograph can be enormously more revealing than a regular non-panoramic photograph in quite a high proportion of photographic situations. Because many photographed scenes stretch horizontally, a panoramic photograph can capture the required background and the environment of the central theme without the commensurate reduction in photograph size which would occur if the same picture range were encompassed twodimensionally with a lens change.
Panoramic cameras require a somewhat different geometrical approach than do conventional cameras because, short of using an extremely expensive lens, a spherical lens must be made to sweep through the angle of the panorama. The sweeping action must be smooth and unhalting, and the camera ordinarily must be mounted so that it remains more stable than is necessary for the taking of a conventional picture.
Panoramic cameras in the past have utilized complicated gearing mechanisms driven by a wind-up escapement, or in some cases, motors. The intricacy and expense of some of these arrangements is prohibitive to the non-professional photographer, and the utilization of gears creates the built-in characteristics of gear lash with age, and some vibration as the gears mesh. Any vibration is, of course, the anathema of clear photography and especially in panoramic photography due to the duration of the exposure.
There is a need, therefore, for a simple, gearless, smoothly functioning panoramic camera than can be produced inexpensively and marketed as a high-quality product to amateur and professional photographers both.